The Devil You Know (5 page)

Well, that proved what Vivian was, as if I had any doubts. Brownswick would know. I looked up at the faun who was practically looming over me, glaring at me in his usual feral way. His tail twitched, and I wondered what was going through his little faun brain, not that I wanted to know. “I have no idea what I’ll be doing with her, Brownie.”

“I know.” Brownswick grinned. He had huge, faintly sharp teeth. “I see the future sometimes in the still waters. She will be your Kryptonite, my Lord.”

“You need to stop eavesdropping on campers, Brownie,” I said. “Your slang is terrible.”

“That does not make it untrue.”

“What about the little girl?”

“The girl is of no interest to me. She is obviously not of an age to rut.”

“Have you seen her?” I shoved the picture in his face so he lurched back, his hooves stomping the damp, leafy ground. I knew that the hoofmarks left behind would look exactly like those of a gigantic stag, and no hunter in these woods would be any the wiser. A part of me—an evil part, I admit—imagined Brad King lusting after the rack of the stag that left such marks year after endless year, but never finding it. A man’s gotta have his fantasies.

“I do not know,” Brownswick said at last.

“How can you not know? This entire mountain is your territory.”

Brownswick shook his head and his massive antlers grazed the low branches of the tree we stood beneath, me with my back to the trunk, Brownie practically pinning me to it. I thought the weight of them had to be substantial. I wondered how he managed to keep his head up. “I have been with my nymphs these past few days, my Lord. It is the season to rut. I have not set foot in the forest for almost three days.”

“Such a Romeo, Brownie.”

“You, my Lord, are jealous.” He smiled at me in a lascivious way.

I smiled back, not to be outdone. “You’re probably right. Will you keep the picture and let me know if you see her?” I knew I was asking a lot. Just touching a manmade piece of paper was a great sacrifice on Brownswick’s part. Then I remembered the doll. “And will you take this as well? It belonged to the girl and probably still carries her scent.”

He took these things gingerly between his clawed fingers, as if he might be infected by them. “If it pleases you. I will ask the nymphs to look as well.”

“I appreciate that.”

“My wives will be much more interested in finding the girl than I,” he warned me. “I seek other pursuits.” Brownie drew close to my face and I thought I might gag on the smell of him. “And you have still not paid the piper, daemon. I expect payment from the other-creatures who cross my woods, even if they
are
my Lord.”

“Sorry, I didn’t bring my checkbook.”

The faun drew back and stamped at the ground angrily, kicking up a fury of small stones. “Run, daemon.”

“No,” I told him steadily, blowing a smoke ring at Brownie. “I don’t think so.” As a creature only half human, I wasn’t protected under the natural Laws that prevented human beings from being hunted by the other-creatures. What all that translated into was:
A lot of weird shit could come after me.
Not that I was going to let that worry me. Much.

It occurred to me that Vivian was in just as much danger as I, especially from these woods.

Brownswick smiled again, as if he were reading my thoughts in his naughty way. “I sense my Lord will soon be in rut as well. Perhaps you and the female daemon will return to these woods then. I should like to meet the future queen of perdition. I should like to know her.”

“I bet you would,” I told him.

“You must pay me
something
. It is my right. I am king here.”

I reached into my pocket and gave the faun a melty yellow pack of peanut M&M’s I’d been carrying around with me for some while. “See ya, Brownie,” I said and left him to go explore the woods.

I moved west toward Cherry Hill, through the sun-spackled forest, watching my step as I clambered over the brambly, leaf-littered ground full of roots and soft sinkholes. I wondered about those horror movies where the psychotic killer pursues some busty female victim for miles through the nighttime woods. I would have gotten about five hundred feet before I fell off the mountain. I don’t think Hollywood filmmakers have
ever
been in deep woods, at least not like these where it’s as dark as night even at noontime and everything snags your clothes.

I was alone in this neck of the woods. A few miles off I could hear the occasional blast as the tailgating party shot at squirrels and rabbits. Otherwise, the woods were quiet. Much too quiet. I didn’t even hear the cry of crows, and there are
always
crows around somewhere.

Eventually I found an old Indian trail. It wended through some close stands of maple trees and white paper birch. The tall grasses and vegetation were stamped flat in some places. I could tell it had been used recently, maybe by hikers, maybe by something else. The grasses were green and broken. Hey, I may be a city mouse, but I know how to track.
CSI
and Animal Planet, you know? I followed the trail for a mile or so until I reached the edge of a ravine. It angled sharply downward where it met a narrow creek with rocky sides. Beyond that was a cagey tree area that looked almost pitch black, what the locals call a
hollow
. I’d been walking for about an hour and a half. I knew by the number of cigarettes I had smoked. You can either admire that or let it horrify you. I don’t care either way.

I scrambled down the side of the ravine, my insulated Skechers kicking up a lot of dirt and rocks. A jackrabbit bounded out of my way. Compared to Brownie, I probably had the grace of a water buffalo. Then again, I didn’t prance around the woods all day with my harem of nymphs.

I ducked down and the hollow closed over me like a cave. It felt like midnight underneath the dense canopy of trees—mostly pine and big, frothy firs. It was also cold as hell and smelled deeply of tree sap, dry needles, and wild animal urine. I think my New York senses revolted at the lack of pollution. I slapped at the mosquitoes trying to land on my face.

I decided I didn’t want to be here. There was a huge feeling of
keep out
that kept tickling along my spine and making my stomach turn over. So of course I needed to go on. I found myself clomping along the needle-strewn earth, moving like I was in a suspect warehouse somewhere on the Eastside, my silver Smith & Wesson Tanaka in my hand, my finger on the safety. I didn’t remember drawing the gun.

The Tanaka is a huge hand cannon, larger than a Desert Eagle and somewhat similar in design to Dirty Harry’s gun. It’s sexy as hell and can take down a bear. I’ve had it since the force but I hadn’t chosen it to feel macho. The other police-issue Glocks and S&W’s just didn’t fit my big hands right. I wondered what I planned on doing with it should I encounter something untoward in the deep woods. Even the Tanaka’s .50 caliber rounds only had a fifty-fifty chance of taking down something supernatural, depending on where I shot it.

I stopped when I reached the weird patch. I’m not sure what else to call it. The golden-brown needles that completely littered the ground were sparser here in a rough rectangular area maybe twenty feet wide by fifty feet long. I could see the wet packed earth as it squelched around my hiking boots. I might have worried. Missing child plus churned earth equals tragedy, if you know what I mean. But this wasn’t recent—not recent enough, anyway. The earth had been disturbed some time back, at the beginning of the summer, maybe.

One way to make certain.

I got down on my knees, slid the Tanaka back into its armpit holster, and started digging up clumps of wet heavy soil with my hands. Not a wholly pleasant experience. Thankfully, it wasn’t hard. We’d had some good rains the last few days and the earth was loose. If this were the height of summer, I would have needed a jackhammer.

About a foot down I hit something. I scraped aside the earth and recognized it as a shoebox. Pretty obvious, since it was pink and said
Candies
on the part I was looking at.

I dug down and squirmed it loose. The moment of truth, boys and girls. If there was a body part in the box, I was going to close it up, find Ben, and hand it to him to deal with. I ripped away the frayed hemp and knocked the lid off. Inside was tissue paper, and under that…a doll. That was better than a bloody finger, I supposed.

The doll was made of gingham cloth, hand sewn, with just two small button eyes for a face. Small cloth wings were sewn to it. So it was an angel doll . . . thingy. I wrapped it in the tissue paper and slipped it into my pocket. I put the shoebox back the way I’d found it and covered up the hole I’d dug. I tried another random spot, with the same results. Another shoebox. Inside was another angel doll. Whereas the one in my pocket was blue gingham, this one was red. I tried one more spot and . . . you guessed it. Another shoebox. The angel doll in this one was yellow gingham.

I stood up, a demon with a pocket full of angels, enjoying the irony of that, somehow. I had no idea what the angels meant, if anything. The angels might contain something of monetary value, like little Maltese Falcons. Or they could be weapons in a huge spiritual battle. Or the angels could be just angels, in shoeboxes, buried in the ground. I’d have to ask Morgana’s advice.

They were pretty cute, the little angels. Couldn’t be anything too sinister.

Right?

Ben called the search party in at five, when it started getting dark.
No point to having the locals stumbling around the woods and getting lost.

No one had found any trace of Cassandra Berger. Herb Rinkley, a close associate of Brad King, fell over a log and fractured his ankle. Charlotte Bearsely, who had turned out along with her live-in girlfriend Meg Maguire, got into a pushing match with Brad King, who called her a diesel dyke. The two wound up exchanging blows and rolling around the forest floor until Deputy Branson separated them. Branson cited Charlotte for public indecency. Holly King, Brad’s eldest daughter, threw up in a thatch of wild thistle. They said it was either her mother’s coleslaw or she was knocked up. Four people caught poison ivy, one poison sumac and all were rushed to the emergency room. Shelley interviewed several members of the search team and everyone made their ordeal out to be an episode of
Survivor
. Seven squirrels were shot, and two jackrabbits. One person claimed to see a Chupacabra. That was pretty much the excitement for the day.

Exhausted from my hike, I biked back to Curiosities. When I reached the shop, I found Morgana selling old Mrs. Bailey some herbs for her arthritis. Mrs. Bailey is actually a completely awesome person. She stood at the counter, dressed primly in a bright, flowery dress and honest-to-God gloves and a hat. Mrs. Bailey did not believe in leaving the house without looking like a proper lady. She was one of the few people in Blackwater who did not spook at my appearance, though I couldn’t have blamed her if she had. When I walked into the shop I was covered head to toe in dirt and sweat from my pleasant little hike over Bear Mountain. My hair was dirty and spiky and there were scratches and bug bites on my cheeks. I probably looked like I hadn’t shaved in two weeks. I wondered how people who backpacked and camped regularly in the mountains managed to pull it off without coming out of the woods looking like Sasquatch.

“Nicky!” Mrs. Bailey said, giving me her usual dazzling smile. “What have you done to yourself?”

“I tried to backpack.”

“Tried?”

“I flunked,” I said, snorting because there was pollen and dirt up my nose. “Those mountains are brutal to us city folks.”

Mrs. Bailey laughed. “I was telling Miss Morgana about Mr. Phipps. He was barking at the attic stairs again.” She paused dramatically. “It’s very unusual for him to be doing that. Do you think I could have a ghost?”

“Well, your house is very old,” I said. I had learned long ago that trying to reason with Mrs. Bailey about her high-strung, inbred Pomeranian was useless. People like Mrs. Bailey spent their whole lives hoping to meet a ghost or demon. I spend mine trying to avoid them. Unfortunately, the supernatural sticks to me like shit on a baby’s blanket. “Did you want me to come out and take a look around later this week?” I asked.